Shard of Darkness
by Narilsa
Summary: Very short. Squall and Bahamut bond a bit. Quistis gets one line, too.


Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII is copyright Squaresoft. No copyright infringement is intended.   
  


shard of darkness   


_This is the way that time turns, the world ends, the song fails. This is the way the stars die, the seas dry, the winds stop._

Bahamut was fond of saying that. 

He had _almost_ gotten used to the cryptic whisperings of Bahamut in the back of his mind, and that was about as comfortable as any mortal could ever be with it. Bahamut's voice was threefold; the deathsong of a star coupled with the dark, crackling richness of lazy fire, both wrapped around a core of echoing, halted time. It was hardly a blend that any mortal could be _capable_ of feeling fully at ease with. 

Every time Squall felt those tones flicker through his mind, he could not suppress the trembling response that shivered just beneath his skin. It was resonance. One tuning fork struck itself upon a star, and its brother joined it in sympathetic shudders. 

Bahamut was a strange Force, near-malevolent in his delight in incomprehensible mantras; a seer-god who saw in four dimensions and spoke in a triple voice. He alone of the Guardian Forces seemed to enjoy his sway over the mind he was junctioned too; or maybe he was the only one with the power to have that sway at all. During the time after they defeated him, he often amused himself by snatching control of Squall and walking him off to recite prophecies to the stars. It was often that Squall would disappear in the middle of the night, only to be found standing windwhipped and desolate beneath the riotous sky. His eyes would be full of stars and his voice unfolded, like a single violin string unwound into three simultaneously singing threads. 

Once when this happened, Squall recovered his mind himself; only to find himself blinking beneath a torrential downpour with no idea of how he had come to be there. The storm was thick and driving, but Squall was not much ruffled by it. Though the steady sound of the rain upon the ground was more the dull roar of a waterfall than the watery hiss of a spring shower, and the screaming wind and intermittent lightning stirred the world into a chaotic frenzy, Squall saw through his namesake clearly with senses not entirely his own. The air was clean and sharp and had a chill, refreshing edge to it, but Squall found himself impelled to breathe more shallowly than usual; much of the air that swirled around him at one moment in time would be ripped away in the next. Continual vacuums flickered around him at every instant, their positions subject to the flow of wind about him. 

_When we first met, I asked you why you fight. You said it was your nature._

Squall had long ago conditioned himself against being startled by a sudden voice in his head; he didn't move. Bahamut was speaking again of things he did not see the relevance of, and he saw no need to respond. Lifting his face into the wind, he slitted his eyes against the rain and listened within and without. It had been so long since he had been allowed to be alone, just alone like this; with no pressing decisions or administrative duties or nagging people saying that this and this and this all had to be done. The wind and rain stripped everything down to its most quintessential elements; tearing dead leaves from trees, ripping away the heavy stagnant air, blasting against the impurities lodged in the ground. It beat against the shell of duty around him, tore it away until there was only Squall. Not the commander of Garden, not the son of the Esthari president, not the Knight to the last known Sorceress, not the Lion-savior of the world. Just Squall: singular, self-sufficient, self-contained. Alone. 

_I think I know now what you meant._

A glimmer flared briefly in the back of his mind following that second unwelcome rumination from Bahamut. It was a something-- a memory-- that the seer-dragon had turned over with a claw and let the light glance upon; _the damned dragon would not let him forget, even just for a moment._ Garden glimmered cool and pastel in his mind's eye, and everything he had done with Garden. An accusatory resonance issued from the vague form of Bahamut in his head. _It was my duty._ Squall, defensive as always. _I was ordered to._

_Duty and nature are different. But it doesn't matter to you either way, does it?_

Squall was silent. The storm spoke for him. 

_I think I understand you now,_ Bahamut laughed. 

Spreading his arms to the sky in a swift, abortive motion, Squall unhooked his junction. He _physically_ felt the form of the dragon uncurl from a corner of his head; felt the coils of the tail unwind and the great wings unfurl, loosening all the forgotten fragments of memories that had formed the dragon's nest. They glimmered in Squall's mind, a thousand shards of time spinning haphazardly behind his eyes. Bahamut poured through him, darkness bleeding from darkness; coiling sinuously out from his mind, down his shoulders, and twisting around his spread arms, he appeared as a serpentine flow of black threads that coalesced between Squall's leather-sheathed hands. The indefinite ebony shape spread great wings, scattering flakes of obsidian light, and spiraled into the sky. The form of the dragon pierced the heavy cloud cover, sending the wisps of greysilver whirling across the sky; and for a heartbeat Squall saw the dark figure outlined coldly beneath an assault of stars. 

_I'm not as simple as you may think,_ Squall replied to the whirling shard of darkness above him. 

Sungold and rose flowed at the very edge of his peripheral vision, knitted itself swiftly into the sharp form of a woman as soon as he glanced more fully at it. As if called by that signature phrase he had given her so long ago, Quistis came to his side. 

She'd seen him standing alone out in the rain, a figure whose edges were so blurred into the pelting water that the instructor found herself hard-pressed to say exactly where Squall ended and the storm began. 

She glanced first at him, seemed about to reprimand him for being out here in the storm alone without telling anyone where he'd gone; but then, she saw the far-off, telltale silhouette of Bahamut. The dragon was tearing his way through the clouds, tracing star-specked black runes in the thick, molten dark silver. 

"You let him go?" Quistis asked, shouting against the sound of the storm. Squall didn't answer immediately, and when he did he did not detach his gaze from the sky to look at her. 

"I trust him to come back," Squall said into the wind. 

Bahamut's voice laughed in his mind. 

_I thought trust was what you have always feared._


End file.
